


but you, you could be the one

by sulfuric



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, First Meetings, M/M, Soulmates, brenderesa and nalby are briefly mentioned, i wrote about being on a train while on a train um inception who??, punctuality related stresses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-06-13 13:36:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15365820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sulfuric/pseuds/sulfuric
Summary: minho is about to meet his soulmate and he isn't feeling all that cute about it.





	but you, you could be the one

**Author's Note:**

> for thominho week 2018!!! i was gonna write something for all the prompts but that would imply that i even remotely have my shit together, so. have this.

To say that Minho is nervous when he boards his train would probably be one of the bigger understatements a person could make. He stows away his suitcase and finds his seat with little trouble, settling in for the five-hour ride. But none of that has anything to do with the lump in his throat or the compulsive cracking of his knuckles.

Here’s the deal - Minho knows that he’s going to meet his soulmate in about ten minutes. The dumb little countdown on his wrist tells him that much. It’s not so much the number (09:34, and going down each second) he’s worried about so much as the  _ colour _ of the timer (red). The way this thing works is that your timer runs green for most of your life, up until your fate - your first encounter with your universe-approved soulmate - is sealed. Minho’s had a few close encounters before. He’s seen his wrist flash as low as four minutes before the number suddenly disappeared, recalculating to a far-off two years. 

Now, it’s red. Certain. 

_ Yeah, certain death,  _ Minho thinks, that classic nihilist humour coping mechanism kicking in just when he needed it. 

He’s never been good at commitment. The whole soulmate thing had been around for a while now, so there’s definitely a culture surrounding it that promotes Not Commiting until you’ve met the  _ one _ . Why waste your time getting attached to someone who wasn’t going to be your soulmate? And it makes sense, sure, but Minho’s pretty sure his issues go beyond the norm. Out of his five years of adult life, he’s never held an apartment for more than six months, and tends to keep his social circle pretty small. One or two close friends, but that’s about it. He’s never had a serious relationship, but he’s definitely what his sister might call  _ promiscuous _ . Most of his hookups end up with him bolting out of whoever’s apartment he ended up in for the night around dawn, praying to a god he didn’t believe in that they wouldn’t awaken in his half-clothed haste.

So, soulmates. Not really a concept Minho is super into. It’s a good idea, in theory, and he will admit that everyone he knows who’ve already met their person are all very happy post-countdown. He’s never met any Glitches - people who the system have failed; either their soulmates was incompatible with them or they just didn’t  _ have  _ one - but he has a feeling that he might be in that position very soon (eight minutes and fifty seconds, to be exact).

Not every “Glitch” is unhappy with not having a soulmate. Some people just don’t need that kind of love in their life, and are perfectly happy on their own. Also, Glitch is a pretty offensive term, in his and many other’s opinions, so he chooses not to use it. But regardless of the language, Minho’s pretty sure he’s not one of those people. He doesn’t know how, but he can just feel it.

He’s pretty sure that this is going to end up being a very, very awkward train ride.

But, regardless of any of Minho’s feelings, assumptions, or dread, the timer on his wrist keeps counting down, closer and closer to the moment of truth. Minho rolls his eyes, suppressing a groan.  _ Moment of truth? Get a grip.  _ He’s trying his best not to be dramatic, but that’s clearly proving to be quite difficult for him in this moment. It’s not helping that the train car seems to really filling up now, people passing by him without a second look while the seat next to him remains empty. 

He looks out the window, wishing there was some French countryside speeding by so he could have something to focus on instead of nearly jumping out of his seat every time someone makes their way up the aisle. Sadly, there is only a concrete wall outside his window, and the people keeping on filing by. Each new passenger tests his sanity.

Attempting to prevent the dangerous downward spiral of panic he feels coming on, Minho checks his phone. Five minutes until the train is supposed to leave the station. A quick glance to his wrist and some slower-than-it-probably-should-be mental math tells him that his soulmate will be waltzing onto the car with a roomy thirty seconds to spare before departure. 

This is not helpful. Minho is most definitely someone who values punctuality, and just the  _ thought  _ of getting on a train less than a minute before it leaves is stressing him out. If his soulmate is, well,  _ like this _ , then maybe Minho wasn’t just being paranoid in his earlier assumptions.

He lets out a long sigh and crosses his arms. With just three minutes left now, the only thing he can do is wait. He thinks about Newt, and how he and his soulmate Alby met in a lift, of all places. If there’s anybody who can make Minho believe in this whole soulmate thing, it’s those two. It’s like they were  _ made  _ for each other.

He thinks about Brenda, his first girlfriend back in high school. The first time she’d come to one of his away meets for track, she met Teresa. He remembers it so clearly, seeing it happen from across the makeshift arena: she’d been trying to squeeze by a group of kids from the other high school from their town when she bumped into one of the long jumpers. She was tall, and always wore her hair in a long braid. It happened in slow motion, almost, the way Brenda had grabbed the girl’s forearms, stabilizing them both with that special laugh girls reserved for other girls they didn’t know because they were just that  _ nice _ . But then the laughter dissolved into this look of disbelief, and Minho  _ knew _ . He’d turned away then, not needing to see the two of them look down at their wrists in shock to know what happened next.

(What happened next was that Minho ran his heat and lost. Brenda cheered anyway, and came up to him afterwards with tears in her eyes and Teresa’s hand in hers. It was all very dramatic for a bunch of fifteen year olds. It stung, for a while, but Minho got over it. He learned to Get Over It a lot quicker after that.)

Minho thinks and thinks and thinks, going through all of his past hookups and flings and moments where he’d found himself asking,  _ but what about then?  _ But now  _ then  _ is  _ now  _ and there’s four seconds left on Minho’s wrist and he’s craning his neck to see out into the aisle and then-- 

Then from behind him this absolute  _ mess  _ of a human comes hurtling to a stop in front of Minho, squinting down at his ticket and then up to the seat number. Then he sort of collapses on the spot, entire upper body going limp as his bags slide off his shoulders onto the floor of the aisle. 

“Almost miss-” He starts to speak but cuts himself off when he sees Minho, jaw actually falling open as he falls silent, breathing still way too heavy to be considered normal. “Uh, I. Almost, uh. Almost missed the, uh, the.” He tries to recover a moment later but fails considerably, eyes shooting down to his wrist, now flashing  _ 00:00 _ , just like Minho’s. After an eternity, he finishes lamely. “Train.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” Minho says, because it’s the first thing that comes to his stupid, stupid brain. He wants to die. This guy is really, really  _ cute. _

And he apparently thinks the same of Minho, cause it takes another couple of seconds for him to collect himself enough to speak again, blinking about a million times as a blush spreads across his (unfairly cute) freckles. “I’m Thomas.”

_ Thomas.  _ It fits him perfectly. Minho grins up at him like an idiot, cynical premonitions all damned to hell.

“This is usually the part where you say your name,” Thomas says then, this ridiculous smile breaking out on his face. 

_ Oh. Right.  _ “Sorry. Minho,” is all he can get out, swallowing down whatever garbage his brain might have come up with next.

Thomas smiles again at that, softer, and unbelievably fond, then looks down at his feet. “Well, Minho, would it be okay if I sat with you?” 

“Yeah,” he replies, trying not to let his voice sound too much like he feels:  _ giddy _ . But it doesn’t matter because Thomas is the exact same, excitement buzzing through him as he takes his seat next to Minho, dragging his bags down by his feet. His eyes - like amber, almost  _ gold _ \- have this look like  _ wow, holy fucking shit _ , which is exactly what Minho is thinking. Eyes like that could almost make a guy want to settle down.

But Minho’s not fooling anyone with this  _ almost  _ bullshit, because fuck, he’d throw away his passport and take out a mortgage on a house if it meant he got to spend forever with Thomas. And then it hits him - in that moment with this almost-stranger looking right at him with so much admiration it almost winds him - that he  _ does  _ get to spend forever with Thomas. That’s how the whole soulmate thing  _ works _ . 

That is, of course, if it all does really  _ work. _ Like, if this initial attraction doesn’t fizzle out and if they’re not just Glitches in the system and if Thomas really does eventually decide to love Minho, despite his fears and his flightiness and-

And then Thomas is rambling. “-’cause like this is really cool and I always thought that maybe I just didn’t  _ have  _ a soulmate because literally all my friends found theirs so early and I haven’t even looked at my time in like, at least a week, and I was so focused on finding my gate for this train that I didn’t even  _ realize  _ the time was locked in or whatever so this is like, really crazy right now, and I’m - oh, by the way, if I knew I was meeting you today I totally would have worn something nicer-” he gestures to himself then, taking a breath for the first time since the beginning of his tangent, which Minho can’t help but find endearing, “-and anyway, what I was gonna say was I think I have a way to find out if we’re  _ really _ , truly soulmates.”

_ This _ gets Minho’s attention. 

(Though, he would definitely be lying if he said  _ everything  _ about Thomas didn’t get his attention, from the little swoop of his dark hair across his forehead to the way he gestured wildly as he was speaking, and the way his ankles were crossed underneath him, and, frankly, the way he found it apt to launch into this wildly long rant with no apparent end in sight approximately three minutes after first spotting Minho.)

“Do tell,” he says, leaning in ever so slightly. Thomas smiles, raising his eyebrows. He pauses for effect, then takes a breath, face suddenly serious. He blinks, eyes intense and locked with Minho’s.

“Do you like Carly Rae Jepsen?”

And with that, Minho knows that things are going to be just fine - no, not fine. Fucking awesome.

**Author's Note:**

> if you think both minho and thomas wouldn't fucking love queen crj then you're a fool AND a coward
> 
> [tumblr](http://00250.tumblr.com)


End file.
